How a Summer Camp in Pine Plains Shaped One of Broadway’s Greats

In late June 1920, a train pulled into Pine Plains carrying 200 children from the New York metropolitan area. Their destination: Stissing Lake Camp, where they would spend eight weeks far from the clamor of city life, immersed in fresh air, pine trees, and open skies. The camp operated for more than half a century, welcoming thousands of children — but one camper’s story is exceptional. 

His name was Jerome Sheldon Herman and he would go on to become one of Broadway’s greatest composers.

Born in 1931, he was the only child of Ruth and Harry Herman of Jersey City, N.J. The couple had spent summers working at camps in the Catskills and, in 1936, a visit to Pine Plains led to their hiring as counselors by Max and Lydia Horowitz, the founders of Stissing Lake Camp. They became head counselors in 1940 and, five years later, purchased the camp outright. 

Harry was a gym teacher who played the saxophone; Ruth, also a teacher, sang and played piano and accordion. In 1937 they brought their 6-year-old son, Jerry, to Pine Plains — and the family returned every summer until 1954.

Their summers in Pine Plains began in June, as soon as the school year let out. The family travelled north and prepared the camp for the season. Jerry’s job, according to his memoir “Showtune,” was to change the lightbulbs in the cabins and dorms. But once kids arrived, he did not receive special privileges. The camp had separate areas for boys and girls separated by the southeastern bay of Stissing Lake. Jerry boarded with the other boys — following the same schedule, with one notable exception.

Harry hoped his son would embrace sports like baseball and basketball — and eventually take over the camp. But Jerry had little interest or talent in athletics. With his mother’s full support, he gravitated instead toward music, entertaining campers by playing the piano. By age 11, he was performing each night after supper in the social hall. “Those three hundred kids at the Stissing Lake Camp became the brothers and sisters I didn’t have at home,” he wrote in his memoir.

In Jersey City, the Hermans were frequent Broadway theatergoers, and show tunes filled their home. A performance of “Annie Get Your Gun” when Jerry was 14 cemented his love for musicals. Watching Ethel Merman onstage was a revelation. “I got a load of that great lady and I was gone… I said to myself, ‘Okay, kid, this is it. This is the most exciting thing in the whole world,’” he wrote in “Showtune.” Years later, he told The New York Times, “I can still remember coming home from the show and sitting down at the piano and being able to play parts of six songs I’d never heard before. I was truly inspired by Irving Berlin…”

Jerry nurtured this love of the musical form during his time at Stissing Lake Camp, writing parodies of popular songs as well as original works that were performed in camp revue shows. Making music boosted his self-esteem. ”When I was on the baseball field I was nobody,” he wrote in his memoir. “But when I played the piano, I was somebody.”

Stissing Lake Camp remained open in the summers of World War II. The camp was a major supporter of the War Bond campaigns in Pine Plains. In 1943, The Register-Herald reported that the camp purchased $15,000 in bonds; the following year, that number rose to $20,000 — a contribution that, the paper noted, helped Pine Plains meet its quota both years.

By the mid-1940s, Jerry was helping produce the camp’s annual musicals. By the age of 17, he was fully in charge of running those shows, with “Finian’s Rainbow” being his first full production. The success of the next one, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” convinced his father to accept his son’s talent. Jerry was named the camp’s Musical Theater Director and was allowed to live in a private guest cottage on the campus.

In 1948, Jerry attended the Parsons School of Design in New York City, looking toward a career as an architect or designer. But fate intervened. A friend of a member of his mother’s bridge club knew Frank Loesser, a well known songwriter who would soon become famous for creating the hit show “Guys and Dolls.” It was arranged for Jerry to meet Loesser and play a couple of songs for him. They spent that entire afternoon talking about songwriting. With Loesser’s encouragement, Jerry decided he should pursue musical theater as a career.

Dropping out of Parsons, the young Herman enrolled at the University of Miami to study music. His summers, though, were still spent in Pine Plains helping his parents, playing piano, and producing musicals. 

In 1952, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” was revived at the camp. The Register-Herald ran the following that August:

“‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,’ a musical comedy, will be presented at Stissing Lake Camp’s Playhouse, on Monday evening, August 11, at 8 o’clock sharp. The proceeds will be turned over to the Methodist church building fund, a generous effort on the part of the Stissing Lake Camp to a community project.”

One week later the paper reported on the performance:

“The sum of $82.50 was realized by the committee for the church repairs. Seldom does this community have such an outstanding musical play. It showed great care in preparation. The entire musical score was written and played by Jerry Herman and it moved forward with precision until the climax which brought many curtain calls from the enthusiastic audience. This amateur show by the young people of Camp Stissing was so good that it gave the impression of professional talent.”

In 1954, Herman’s father offered him the ownership of Stissing Lake Camp, but he declined. The Register-Herald reported in July of that year that the camp was sold to Jack Isaacs and Abe Rosenthal of New York City. The report indicated that Stissing Lake Camp was “among the top ten [camps] in the east, with the highest rating in the field of dramatics.”

Herman graduated from the University of Miami in 1953 and remained connected with the school his entire life. The following year, he debuted his first off-Broadway show, “I Feel Wonderful,” using material he had written in college. It was his only production that his mother was able to see; Ruth died in December 1954. Herman said in his memoir that she was probably the most important influence in his life. “I went into serious grieving for a whole year. I stopped doing everything. I was a basket case,” he wrote.

During the late 1950s, Herman found his way back to his art by playing piano in clubs and incubating ideas for the future.

In 1960, a Broadway producer sent Herman and Don Appell to Israel to gather cultural material for a new musical set in the country. The resulting show, “Milk and Honey,” with book by Appell and music and lyrics by Herman, opened on Broadway in November 1961 and had a successful run of 14 months.

While an off-Broadway piece Herman created during those same years, “Madame Aphrodite,” flopped, he was soon to create two shows that cemented his place in Broadway history.

Both “Hello, Dolly,” and “Mame” were giant hits. In writing the music and lyrics of both, Herman was thought to be channeling the energy of his late mother for the title roles.

“Hello, Dolly” opened on Broadway in January 1964 and quickly became a sensation. That same month, Louis Armstrong’s recording of the title song reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, unseating the Beatles from their chart-topping streak. The show’s momentum continued in June, when the original cast album, featuring Carol Channing, also claimed the top spot.

“Hello, Dolly” won 10 Tony Awards and ran for a record-breaking 2,844 performances.

Herman’s next hit, “Mame,” starring Angela Lansbury, premiered on Broadway in May 1966, won three Tony Awards, and ran for 1,508 performances.

By 1969, both “Hello, Dolly!” and “Mame” were still running on Broadway when a third Herman musical, the lesser-known “Dear World,” opened. It marked the first time in Broadway history that three shows written by the same composer-lyricist were playing simultaneously. Herman, riding a historic wave of Broadway success, had come a long way from his earliest productions at Stissing Lake Camp, just 100 miles to the north.

Throughout the 1970s, Herman produced several shows that, while notable, did not achieve the success of his earlier work. That changed in 1983 with “La Cage aux Folles,” which broke barriers and box office records. With a book by Harvey Fierstein and songs by Herman, the show brought a story centered on gay life into the American mainstream. It won the Tony Award for best musical, along with six other Tonys, and ran for 1,761 performances before closing in November 1987.

Herman’s three signature shows — “Hello, Dolly,” “Mame,” and “La Cage aux Folles”—endured well beyond their original Broadway runs. All were adapted into major motion pictures and have become staples of the Broadway repertoire.

Despite significant health challenges, Herman lived a long and active life. Diagnosed with HIV in 1985, he pursued experimental treatments with characteristic optimism and resilience, remaining creatively engaged until his death on Dec. 26, 2019, at age 88.

Among his many honors, Herman received a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre in 2009 and a Kennedy Center Honor the following year. The University of Miami, his alma mater, named its Coral Gables campus theater the Jerry Herman Ring Theatre.

Herman forged lifelong friendships at Stissing Lake Camp, including with Alice Borden, who spoke at his memorial in February 2020. She fondly recalled meeting him there and described him as a “one-man dynamo,” designing and painting sets, writing arrangements, and putting on perfect shows. It was on those summer stages that Herman first stepped into his own spotlight — not just as a performer, but as a creator, discovering the voice that would define his life’s work.

From the banks of Stissing Lake to the bright lights of Broadway, Jerry Herman’s music continues to echo.